State View: Report shows lack of urgency on Asian Carp

Tuesday

Jan 14, 2014 at 2:00 PM

Four years after it began studying the question, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still doesn’t have a real plan. ... Waiting 25 years — or even 10 or five years — will be too long as far as the Asian carp is concerned.

This appeared Thursday in the Holland Sentinel:

When it comes to dealing with the Asian carp, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just doesn’t seem to get it.

Faced with an imminent threat from an invasive species that could wipe out Great Lakes fisheries — a threat that demands action yesterday — the Corps submitted a report on stopping the spread of the Asian carp replete with multibillion-dollar plans that could take 19 to 25 years to implement. In response to members of Congress who wanted clear expert guidance to avoid political bickering, the Corps chose not to endorse any of its proposed solutions, a move that could doom any meaningful action on the federal level.

The report to Congress released Monday was supposed to identify the best way to stop the voracious carp from migrating from the Mississippi River basin, where it has already displaced native fish, to Lake Michigan via the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and adjacent waterways. The report lists eight options, ranging from doing nothing to enhancing chemical and electrical barriers to an $18 billion system of dams and locks that the Corps says would take 25 years to complete. Absent from the 232-page report is any sense of the urgency of the task. Asian carp DNA have already been found in the Great Lakes basin, and while that’s not conclusive proof that the fish are already here, it’s an ominous sign. Just last month, the Corps quietly acknowledged that it’s quite possible that Asian carp could slip through the electric barrier that’s now the only real obstacle to their spread. Once the carp are resident in the Great Lakes and start monopolizing the food supply, the damage to the Great Lakes fishery will be irreversible.

But four years after it began studying the question, the Corps still doesn’t have a real plan. “While the report … focused on a number of options to protect the Great Lakes, it failed to fully develop a permanent solution to prevent Asian carp from destroying the Great Lakes,” said U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland, who with Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan is spearheading a bipartisan effort to protect the Great Lakes.

The lack of a real plan isn’t surprising, given the culture of the Corps of Engineers, a slow-moving government agency historically known more for big construction projects and accommodating industry than for preserving natural ecosystems. We believe the only real way to stop the spread of the Asian carp and other invasive species is to restore the natural separation that once existed between the Mississippi and Great Lakes basins. That’s the conclusion of most scientists and conservationists, but that change is opposed by the shippers who use the canal to transport goods between the Mississippi basin and Chicago area industries. By failing to endorse any plan, the Corps may have set up a showdown in Congress between the shipping interests, backed by Illinois and Indiana, and Michigan and other Great Lakes states that want a clean separation between the two basins. Given the differences between the local players, members of Congress from other parts of the country may refuse to fund anything.

We understand that this is a complex subject, involving not only shipping but Chicago’s wastewater system, and that reversing the century-old engineering feats that brought the Mississippi and the Great Lakes together will be an expensive proposition. But that’s no excuse for the Corps’ failure to act with greater dispatch.

Waiting 25 years — or even 10 or five years — will be too long as far as the Asian carp is concerned. The Corps of Engineers report should at least get the conversation started in Washington, but there’s not much time to move turn conservation into action.

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